EIGHTEENTH LECTURE
God knows other beings not as specificating but as specificated termini, that is to say, as objects attained in a merely material, not formal, fashion. Here is the privilege of absolute independence which divine Act enjoys with regard to things, either as objects of divine knowledge, or as objects of divine love, or as objects of divine causation into existence. Acts are specificated by objects, but the divine act is specificated only -- and fully -- by the divine object. Other objects are attained merely in surplus, and as constituted in their intellibigility, in their lovability, as well as in their own existence, by the divine Act, be it considered as knowing, or as loving, or as creating.
Concerning divine will, we must state: First: God loves Himself and wills Himself necessarily. Second: God wills and loves the things which exist, and, because He creates them in so far as He is an intellectual agent, He creates them freely. Third: God loves more that which is better, yet this is so because He causes to be better that which He loves more. Fourth: The notion of the best of all possible worlds is a contradictory notion, as well as the notion of the greatest of all whole numbers. It would have been possible to create a world better than the present one, but not to create it better than it has been created.
The error of Malebranche and Leibniz has been to assume that even regarding the Pure Act, one must judge of the perfection of the worker according to the perfection of the work. Consequently, the perfection of the world should be infinite. Finally, Leibniz tried to justify creation and the creator by judging and measuring them according to human reason and ideas, and this rationalist deism, when it failed, was to lead modern thought to atheism. In truth, that is the metaphysical imperfection (contingency, potentiality) of the work which obliges human mind to conclude the existence of a worker who is the Pure Act. And because we know that the Pure Act is infinitely perfect, we conclude that everything God makes is well made, even when we are not able to discern in the world the reasons for this divine well-making.